Live Previews

The Toronto metallers head out to promote seventeenth (!) LP Pounding The Pavement.

Must-see gigs from Anvil, Arch Enemy and Stone Broken.

Plus full gig listings – find out who’s playing where and when.

Until 2008’s real-life rockumentary Anvil! The Story Of Anvil, the career of these Torontobased metalheads had been firmly on the skids. The movie’s unexpected worldwide popularity would change their lives forever. Almost a decade later, guitarist/vocalist Steve ‘Lips’ Kudlow gives thanks for its continued powers of rejuvenation.

The new album, Pounding The Pavement, is your band’s seventeenth. That title is a statement on how hard it is for a group like Anvil to maintain what’s now been a forty-year career. Yeah, it can be tough. We’re like door-to-door salesmen, driving from one place to another, loading it in, trying to sell our merchandise and then packing it all and moving on again.

Musically speaking, the album offers some curveballs. With its treated vocals and unusual rhythms, Doing What I Want is a different kind of track for Anvil…

That one was its final song. Robb [Reiner, drums] and I discussed how we had covered most of Anvil’s trademarks, including the double bass drum thing, and a full-on, slow, pounding song. We had to repeat something or try something we’d not done before. Why paint yourself into a corner when it’s better to jump? Fail to keep things fresh and you’re dead in the water.

Is the subject of Bitch In The Box as it appears – the female narrator of a satnav – or is it a simile for something else entirely?

[Laughs] It’s a true story. Our GPS unit has a female voice and my wife calls her the Bitch In The Box. I thought that was complete genius, so we wrote a song around it.

You had no concerns about possible misogynistic interpretation?

No. To me, it’s really obvious what it’s about. The GPS actually talks in the song – I don’t think there can be any confusion.

Will you be playing many of these new songs on the upcoming UK dates?

So far we do three of them, but I don’t know whether more will be added. When you’ve got seventeen records, it’s really hard to compile a set-list.

Do you ever wonder how your life might have changed had The Story Of Anvil not been made? Musically speaking, things would have gone the same way, but of course it elevated the bar for us. The stakes were raised in just about every way.

It’s on Netflix so presumably you must be famous all over the world. What’s the strangest place you’ve been recognised?

Oh jeez, it can happen anywhere, man, often in ridiculous circumstances. We pulled into a tiny gas station in the middle of the Las Vegas desert and some guy gets out of his car and goes [adopts a strong Texan accent]: “Well, hot damn! That’s the Anvil guys!” He’s got a cowboy hat, and he knows of Anvil – are you kidding me? In Chicago, a guy driving a garbage truck saw Robb and I and reversed back to us. As we were getting a picture taken with him, a limousine pulled over and some lawyer-type guy got out: “I want a picture with you Anvil guys!”

What the fuck – a garbage man and a millionaire?

The demographic is off the chart. It’s not anything to do with metal.

As a serious musician, does it bother you to be known for being in a band that perhaps played it for laughs on the silver screen than as a guitarist? What’s great is that I’m no different to the guy in the movie, so there’s no façade to maintain. I’m happy to be recognised, whether my fame came through music or the movie. It’s a blessing, and you can trust me – many people are jealous as hell.

The wheel has turned again and once more, Anvil’s followers are almost exclusively rock and metal fans. Did it piss you off that for a while people came to see the Anvil because of the silver screen?

No, I’m very proud that we introduced a lot of moviegoers to metal. There wasn’t much of our music in the movie. The director [Sacha Gervasi] said: “It’s like the movie Jaws – you never really see the shark till the end.” I love that people come to see the band [off the back of the movie] – it’s what’s kept us working for the past ten years. DL

Anvil’s 15-date tour begins in London on February 6.

“I’m very proud that we introduced a lot of moviegoers to metal. It’s kept us working for the past ten years.”